Digital wallet coming up empty so far

A funny thing happened the other evening. During one of my late-night chocolate runs, the drug store cashier gushed in amazement when I presented my loyalty card on my iPhone.

By Rob C. Witzel

A funny thing happened the other evening. During one of my late-night chocolate runs, the drug store cashier gushed in amazement when I presented my loyalty card on my iPhone.

“That is incredible,” was her response to scanning the bar code straight from my screen. Of course I smiled and nodded graciously but in reality I, like many other technophiles, am quite disappointed that the promise of a true digital wallet has not gotten much further than stored loyalty or gift cards.

Seems like just yesterday that the promise of leaving our wallets behind was as certain as hot summers. No more pin codes, no more plastic no more bulging back pockets. Store all the info on a secure mobile device and simply wave it at the checkout. Simple enough right? Not so fast.

Any time you’re talking about money somebody is going to get greedy. Insert the entire tech and money merchant industry. A true digital wallet requires a cohesive ecosystem between retailers and banks. This is where the tech industry is seen as the savior — the bridge between competing interests. Problem is the saviors are also licking their chops.

Till now, most have seen Google as the answer. Their ulterior motive would not be to make money on the transaction but to mine the valuable data that comes at the checkout. Google is an advertising company and the value for them comes with tracking consumer habits and targeting them. But Google Wallet, the company’s multimillion dollar investment into the mobile payment arena, has so far come up empty.

Phone carriers have not only been reluctant adopters but are offering competing platforms. Near Field Communication, the technology behind phone-to-retailer transactions has been criticized as not secure enough. The company has even used its own sizeable wallet to spend $300 million gobbling up competitors. The gossip says it’s going nowhere fast.

I have been trying Google Wallet for a few months now and find it flat and uninspiring except as a place to store loyalty cards. Even at that I have been burned at the checkout, unable to access the simple barcode needed to obtain my discount as a frustrated line waited behind me.

Part of the problem has been Apple and the uncertainty of its intentions. Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of the company that took down the likes of the music industry, photography industry and the desktop computer platform. Some see the recent fingerprint scanner technology in the iPhone 5S as a clear sign of Apple locking down its own ecosystem for mobile payments. Regardless, nothing seems imminent and analysts point to Apple as being a company that specializes in having impeccable timing for its products. It appears to be stalling.

As much as consumers might want a straightforward technology, cohesion is not always realistic. The movie industry knows this all too well. Remember the VHS and Beta wars? Even the Blu-ray format we know today was very uncertain a few years back as the industry fought tooth and nail between Sony’s Blu-Ray and Toshiba’s HD DVD. Both perfectly capable formats, but the world could only handle one. The other had to die.

For us to see a true digital wallet, an even bigger industry must decide on a single format. The problem is everybody has a candidate, and they all want to vote for themselves.